Editing Panopticon (section)

=== Surveillance technology ===
[[File:THE CENTRAL POLICE CONTROL STATION, MANNED 24 HOURS A DAY CONTROLS ALL TRAFFIC LIGHTS, RECEIVES REMOTE TV INPUTS FROM... - NARA - 551905.tif|thumb|Closed circuit TV monitoring at the Central Police Control Station, Munich, 1973]]
[[File:Bansky one nation under cctv.jpg|thumb|right|[[Graffiti]] about video surveillance]]
The metaphor of the panopticon prison has been employed to analyse the social significance of [[surveillance]] by [[closed-circuit television]] (CCTV) cameras in public spaces. In 1990, [[Mike Davis (scholar)|Mike Davis]] reviewed the design and operation of a [[shopping mall]], with its centralised control room, CCTV cameras and security guards, and came to the conclusion that it "plagiarizes brazenly from Jeremy Bentham's renowned nineteenth-century design". In their 1996 study of CCTV camera installations in British cities, Nicholas Fyfe and Jon Bannister called central and local government policies that facilitated the rapid spread of CCTV surveillance a dispersal of an "electronic panopticon". Particular attention has been drawn to the similarities of CCTV with Bentham's prison design because CCTV technology enabled, in effect, a central observation tower, staffed by an unseen observer.<ref name="Lyon 2003">{{cite book |title=Surveillance as Social Sorting: Privacy, Risk, and Digital Discrimination |first=David |last=Lyon|year=2003 |publisher=Psychology Press |isbn= 9780415278737 }}</ref>{{rp|249}}